text:
Gasconade County Woman Says Company Failed to Complete Job
GASCONADE COUNTY - A Bay woman says a local contractor failed to finish a renovation job at her home, leaving the work open to the elements and costing her hundreds in additional damage. Rita Overturf said after realizing the lap siding on her home held in too much moisture causing the substrate to rot, it needed to be replaced or the front end of her home would collapse within six to eight months.
In late October, Overturf said she hired Thurmond Brothers Construction to do the the work. The Sullivan-based company is owned by brothers Steve and Mark Thurmond, who are also the duo behind Sullivan Insulation. Overturf said she initially had a positive experience with the company as Mark Thurmond handled all monetary negotiations in an efficient, professional manner. But Overturf said soon after signing a contract and paying $9,493 up front, she learned Mark Thurmond was deployed to Afghanistan and Steve Thurmond would be taking over the project. Overturf said this is when the problems began.
"He (Steve) told me he had a couple of jobs to finish first, so he wanted to wait to start mine so he could finish it all at one time," Overturf said. "The first time he came, towards the end of November, he took down my guttering and some of the siding and said he would be back on Monday. He never came back."
Overturf said Thurmond came later that week, claiming the man he hired to help with the job had quit. She said Thurmond proceeded to make a few more sporadic visits to the home in a two-month period, cutting a hole around a tree in her deck without framing it back in, taking the threshold off her crawl space door, and leaving the deck on a jack. Overturf said Thurmond's last visit was right before Christmas and he left saying he would return on the "next good weather day." She said she has not heard from him since.
After no sign of Thurmond for almost a month, Overturf felt she had been ripped off.
"I panicked," Overturf said. "It's seven dollars short of $9,500. That's not easy to come up with...and actually I'm in a bind now. I don't know how I'm going to get my house fixed. I almost wish if he was going to steal from me he would've just taken the check, and instead he took the check and did a lot of damage to my house."
That damage has left a six-inch gap between her deck and back door, allowing cold air and water to seep through into the home, causing her kitchen tile to come loose. Overturf has shoved blankets and towels into the space as well as put up a tarp over the open threshold in an attempt to keep the moisture out. She said her heating bill increased more than $200 in the last month. Thurmond also left the torn down guttering and other signs of his unfinished business on full display throughout her lawn.
Overturf said she has been relentless in her efforts to contact Thurmond.
"I mean I went ballistic...like 50 calls to his business phone," Overturf said. "It just rings, and rings, I used to get his voicemail and now I can't get the answering machine or anything. I call every other day and once I realized he stole my money I called continuously and I couldn't reach him from my cell phone or my home phone."
Steve Thurmond did return KOMU 8's calls and said Overturf has not called the business number since his last visit to the home.
"She has not called my business phone in more than three weeks and last time I went out and talked to her I told her I can't come back until it's above 40 degrees so I can paint," Thurmond said.
Last week the temperature was above 40 degrees at least three days. Overturf said she saw no sign of Thurmond.
"We've had many good days," Overturf said. "He could've done woodwork, and carpentry work, painting is the minor stuff, I could do that myself. I need the carpentry work done. There's some very serious work that needs to be done here and it's carpentry work. If he can't do it, he can't just charge me for slapping on some paint. My house will still fall in the front yard."
Thurmond said he has had other engagements.
"Yes we've had some good days off and on but the good days I''ve had I've always been on another job or had to finish up something else," Thurmond said.
Thurmond claims the job is 50 percent or more done and he has full plans to finish it.
"I'm not going to ship up and not finish the job...one thing, I got tools up there," Thurmond said. "I wasn't going to pack up and leave the job, if I wasn't going to be back up there I wouldn't leave tools sitting around ..I'm not planning on not doing the job I just need a couple of good days to get up there and get stuff done."
If this doesn't happen, Overturf feels she is all out of options.
"What can I do? I can't come up with another $9,500 to get it fixed, and it needs to be fixed soon, or I don't have a home," Overturf said.
Overturf regrets not being more detailed when making her decision to hire Thurmond.
Mike Odneal, the branch manager for the Better Business Bureau of Mid-Missouri stresses the importance of details, urging consumers to do their research before choosing a company.
"There are a lot of resources out there for researching companies and we also ask people to talk in person and make sure they're visiting the sites and locations of people who have had construction done by this specific company," Odneal said. "You should also talk to references in detail about how the company performed in the past."
Odneal said contracts are also crucial to ensuring you don't get your money taken away. He recommends making your payments in increments.
"A good way to do it is if you pay a third up front based on a contract and agreement that you have," Odneal said. "Then once there's a certain milestone achieved you pay a little more. Then, don't pay the full amount until the job is completely finished to your satisfaction."
Odneal found one informational claim against the Thurmond Brothers in his system, dating back to 2005, but the system does not have details going that far back.
Overturf hopes others will learn from her situation.
"Be more thorough before you hire anybody," Overturf said. "Do better background checks and make sure they have done reputable work with other people and never pay upfront. That was so stupid of me to do."
As of Monday afternoon, Overturf said she had not heard from Thurmond.


text:
Lithium-Ionen LED round
The development of electronic circuits is our core competence. Sometimes, as here in the field of energy-saving energizers, this leads to solutions that we believe are worthy of protection, and therefore apply for a patent. Meanwhile, the patent was granted. Find out more: Patent fence energizer.
Even if you find for any of our circuits installation instructions (download in pdf format, in german language only at the moment) this is no call to non professionals to build a submersible light even to exchange defective electronics or convert a submersible light to another type of battery or source of light. Rather, they contain information for professionals. Professionals in accordance with our installation instructions are electricians and persons with a comparable or higher education. We are not liable for damages resulting from improper handling of batteries or our products.
Our LED-based circuits require a sufficient cooling of the aluminum core printed circuit board for proper function. They are, therefore, using thermal grease (supplied as standard) to screw on a least 4mm thick bottom. The floor must be absolutely plain and form a unit with the housing of the underwater lamp to dissipate the heat to the surrounding water.
Failing to observe can affect proper function up to destruction!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The Debt Deleveraging Big LiePolitics / US Debt Mar 06, 2012 - 02:25 PM GMT
Cause, Effect & The Fallacy Of Return To Normalcy
"Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought of as poor." - Robert Mallett
I hear the term de-leveraging relentlessly from the mainstream media. The storyline that the American consumer has been denying themselves and paying down debt is completely 100% false. The proliferation of this Big Lie has been spread by Wall Street and their mouthpieces in the corporate media. The purpose is to convince the ignorant masses they have deprived themselves long enough and deserve to start spending again. The propaganda being spouted by those who depend on Americans to go further into debt is relentless. The "fantastic" automaker recovery is being driven by 0% financing for seven years peddled to subprime (aka deadbeats) borrowers for mammoth SUVs and pickup trucks that get 15 mpg as gas prices surge past $4.00 a gallon. What could possibly go wrong in that scenario? Furniture merchants are offering no interest, no payment deals for four years on their product lines. Of course, the interest rate from your friends at GE Capital reverts retroactively to 29.99% at the end of four years after the average dolt forgot to save enough to pay off the balance. I'm again receiving two to three credit card offers per day in the mail. According to the Wall Street vampire squids that continue to suck the life blood from what's left of the American economy, this is a return to normalcy.
The definition of normal is: "The usual, average, or typical state or condition". The fallacy is calling what we've had for the last three decades of illusion – Normal. Nothing could be further from the truth. We've experienced abnormal psychotic behavior by the citizens of this country, aided and abetted by Wall Street and their sugar daddies at the Federal Reserve. You would have to be mad to believe the debt financed spending frenzy of the last few decades was not abnormal.
The Age of Illusion
"Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces." - Sigmund Freud
In my last article Extend & Pretend Coming to an End, I addressed the commercial real estate debacle coming down the pike. I briefly touched upon the idiocy of retailers who have based their business and expansion plans upon the unsustainable dynamic of an ever expanding level of consumer debt doled out by Wall Street banks. One only has to examine the facts to understand the fallacy of a return to normalcy. We haven't come close to experiencing normalcy. When retail sales, consumer spending and consumer debt return to a sustainable level of normalcy, the carcasses of thousands of retailers will litter the highways and malls of America. It will be a sight to see. The chart below details the two decade surge in retail sales, with the first ever decline in 2008. Retail sales grew from $2 trillion in 1992 to $4.5 trillion in 2007. The Wall Street created crisis in 2008/2009 resulted in a decline to $4.1 trillion in 2009, but the resilient and still delusional American consumer, with the support of their credit card drug pushers on Wall Street, set a new record in 2011 of $4.7 trillion.
A two decade increase in retail sales of 135% might seem reasonable and normal if wages and household income had grown at an equal or greater rate. But total wages only grew by 125% over this same time frame. Interestingly, the median household income only grew from $30,600 to $49,500, a 62% increase over twenty years. It seems the majority of the benefits accrued to the top 20%, with their aggregate share of the national income exceeding 50% today, versus 47% in 1992 and 43% in the early 1970s. The top 5% are taking home in excess of 21% of the national income versus less than 19% in 1992 and 16% in the early 1970s. It appears the financialization of America, after Nixon closed the gold window and allowed unlimited money printing by the Federal Reserve, has benefitted the few, at the expense of the many. The bottom 80% of households has seen their share of the national income steadily decrease since the early 1970s. There are 119 million households in the United States and 95 million of these households have seen their wages and income stagnate. One might wonder how the 80% were able to fuel a two decade surge in retail sales with such pathetic wage growth.
Your friendly Wall Street banker stepped into the breach and did their part to aid a vast swath of Americans to enslave themselves in debt. As the chart above reveals, the slave owners on Wall Street have been the chief beneficiary of the decades long debt deluge. It seems that charging 18% interest on hundreds of billions in credit card debt can be extremely profitable for the shyster charging the interest. Decades of mailing millions of credit card offers, inundating financially ignorant Americans with propaganda media messages convincing them they needed a bigger house, fancier car, or latest technological gadget and creating complex derivatives that permitted banks to market debt to people guaranteed not to pay them back but not care since they sold the packages of these toxic AAA rated loans to pension funds and little old ladies, has done wonders for earnings per share, stock option awards, executive salaries and bonus pools. It hasn't done wonders for the net worth of the average American who has been entrapped in the chains of debt, forged link by link over decades of purposeful deception and willful delusion.
The 135% increase in retail sales over two decades may have been slightly enhanced by the 213% increase in consumer credit outstanding. Consumer revolving credit rose from $800 billion to the current level of $2.5 trillion over the last two decades. Those 15 credit cards in our possession were so easy to use that we financed our trips to Dollywood, Sandals, and Euro-Disney, in addition to financing our 72 inch 3D HDTVs, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, decks, pools, recliners with a built in fridges, home theatre rooms, Coach pocketbooks, Jimmy Cho shoes, Rolex watches, yachts, bigger and better boobs, and of course our smokes and beer. Much has been made about the great de-leveraging by the American consumer. There's just one inconvenient fact – it hasn't happened - yet.
Total consumer credit outstanding peaked at $2.58 trillion in July 2008. Today it stands at $2.50 trillion. Revolving credit card debt peaked at $972 billion in September 2008 and subsequently declined to $790 billion by April 2011. It now stands at $801 billion, as living well beyond our means has resumed its appeal. Meanwhile, non-revolving credit for automobiles, boats, student loans, and mobile homes peaked at $1.61 trillion in July 2008 and "crashed" all the way down to $1.58 trillion in May 2010. Once Bennie fired up the printing presses, the government car companies decided to make subprime auto loans again and the Federal government started doling out student loans like a pez dispenser, all was well in the non-revolving consumer loan world. The debt outstanding has soared to $1.7 trillion, a full $90 billion above the pre-crash peak. So, after three and a half years of "austerity" and supposed deleveraging, consumer debt outstanding has fallen by 3%.
The Big Lie of austerity and consumer deleveraging is unquestioned by the talking heads in the mainstream media. They are incapable or unwilling to examine the actual data which substantiates the fact that Americans have NOT deleveraged and have NOT taken austerity to heart. The most basic facts fly in the face of consumers even having the wherewithal to pay down their debt. Median household income has declined from $50,300 in 2008 to $49,400 today. There are 5 million less people employed today than employed in 2008. Total wages in the country have only grown from $6.6 trillion in 2008 to $6.8 trillion today. This increase was concentrated among the .01%, who do not carry credit card debt. They profit from credit card debt. Real disposable personal income has fallen by 5% since the peak in 2008 as Bernanke's Wall Street bailout zero interest rate policy has caused prices for everything except our houses to surge. The people carrying most of the credit card debt are the least able to pay it off. These are the same people who have swelled the food stamp rolls from 28 million in 2008 to 46.5 million today.
A CNBC bubble headed arrogant bimbo might sarcastically ask, "If the American consumer isn't deleveraging, than how did revolving credit card debt drop by $182 billion over three years?" Rather than do the minimal research needed to find the answer, they would rather parrot the company/government line. The chart below, compiled from Federal Reserve data, provides the answer. The Wall Street banks have written off $193.3 billion of bad debt since 2008. Now for some basic math, that will probably be over the head of most Wall Street analysts and CNBC parrots. If you start with $972 billion of credit card debt and you write-off $200 billion (assuming another $7 billion in the 4th Quarter of 2011) and your ending balance is $801 billion, how much debt did the American consumer pay down? It's a trick question. The American consumer ADDED $29 billion of credit card debt since 2008 to go along with the $90 billion of auto and student loan debt ADDED onto their aching backs. So much for the deleveraging storyline. It's comforting to convince ourselves we've changed, but we haven't. And the powers that be need you to keep believing, so they can continue to keep you enslaved and under their thumbs.
Consumer Credit Card Debt and Charge-off Data (in Billions):
Outstanding Revolving Consumer Debt
Outstanding Credit Card Debt
Quarterly Credit Card Charge-Off Rate
Quarterly Credit Card Charge-Off in Dollars
(Source: CardHub.com, Federal Reserve)
Loving Our Servitude
"There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution." Aldous Huxley
The American people have come to love their servitude through a combination of self- delusion, corporate mass media propaganda, and an irrational desire to appear successful without making the necessary sacrifices required to become successful. The drug of choice used to corral the masses into their painless concentration camp of debt has been Wall Street peddled financing. Can you think of a better business model than being a Wall Street bank? You hand out 500 million credit cards to 118 million households, even though 60 million of the households make less than $50,000. You then create derivatives where you package billions of subprime credit card debt and convince clueless dupes to buy this toxic debt as if it was AAA credit. When the entire Ponzi scheme implodes, you write-off $200 billion of bad debt and have the American taxpayer pick up the tab by having your Ben puppet at the Federal Reserve seize $450 billion of interest income from senior citizens and re-gift it to you through his zero interest rate policy. You then borrow from the Federal Reserve at 0% and charge an average interest rate of 15% on the $800 billion of credit card debt outstanding, generating $120 billion of interest and charging an additional $22 billion of late fees. Much was made of the closing of credit card accounts after the 2008 financial implosion, but most of the accounts closed were old unused credit lines. Now that the American taxpayer has picked up the tab for the 2008 debacle, the Wall Street banks are again adding new credit card accounts.
With 40% of all credit card users carrying a revolving balance averaging $16,000, they are incurring interest charges of $2,400 per year. Some of the best financial analysts in the blogosphere have been misled by the propaganda spewed by the Wall Street media shills at Bloomberg and CNBC. The following chart, which includes mortgage and home equity debt, gives the false impression households are sensibly deleveraging, as household debt as a percentage of disposable personal income has fallen from 115% in June 2009 to 101% today. As I've detailed ad nauseam, $200 billion of the $1.2 trillion of "household deleveraging" was credit card write-offs. The vast majority of the remaining $1 trillion of "deleveraging" could possibly be related to the 5 million completed foreclosures since 2009. Of course, this pales in comparison to the unbelievably foolhardy mortgage equity withdrawal of $3 trillion between 2003 and 2008 by the 1% wannabes. Bloomberg might be a tad disingenuous by excluding the $1 trillion of student loan from their little chart. If student loan debt is included, household debt outstanding surges to $11.5 trillion.
Based on the Bloomberg chart you would assume wrongly that American consumers are using their rising incomes to pay down debt. Besides not actually reducing their debts, the disposable personal income figure provided by the government drones at the BEA includes government transfer payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation, food stamps, veterans benefits, and the all- encompassing "other". Disposable personal income in the 2nd quarter of 2008 reached $11.2 trillion. It has risen by $500 billion, to $11.7 trillion by the end of 2011. Coincidentally, government social transfers have risen by $400 billion over this same time frame, a 20% increase. Excluding government transfers, disposable personal income has risen by a dreadful 1.1%. For the benefit of the slow witted in the mainstream media, every penny of the social welfare transfers has been borrowed. Only a government bureaucrat could believe that borrowing money from the Chinese, handing it out to unemployed Americans and calling it personal income is proof of deleveraging and austerity.
Household debt as a percentage of wages in 2008 was 185%. Today, after the banks have written off $1.2 trillion of debt, this figure stands at 169%. Meanwhile, total credit market debt in our entire system now stands at an all-time high of $54 trillion, up $3 trillion from 2007. It stands at 360% of GDP. In 1992, total credit market debt of $15.2 trillion equaled 240% of GDP ($6.3 trillion). Was it a sign of a rational balanced economic system that total credit market debt grew by 355% in the last two decades while GDP grew by only 238%? I think it is pretty clear the last two decades have not been normal or built upon a sustainable foundation. In the three decades prior to 1990 household debt as a percentage of disposable personal income stayed in a steady range between 60% and 80%. The current level of 101% is abnormal. In order to achieve a sustainable normal level of 80% will require an additional $2 trillion of debt destruction. No one is prepared for this inevitable end result. The impact of this "real" deleveraging will devastate our consumer dependent society.
The colossal accumulation of debt in the last two decades was the cause and abnormally large retail sales were the effect. The return to normalcy will not be pleasant for consumers, retailers, mall owners, local governments or bankers.
Demographics are a *****
In addition to an unsustainable level of debt, the pig in the python (also known as the Baby Boomer generation) will relentlessly impact the future of consumer spending and the approaching mass retail closures. Baby Boomers range in age from 51 to 68 today. The chart below details the retail spending by age bracket. Almost 50% of all retail spending is done by those between 35 years old and 54 years old. This makes total sense as these are the peak earnings years for most people and the period in their lives when they are forming households, raising kids and accumulating stuff. As you enter your twilight years, income declines, medical expenses rise, the kids are gone, and you've bought all the stuff you'll ever need. Spending drops precipitously as you enter your 60's. The spending wave that began in 1990 and reached its apex in the mid-2000s has crested and is going to crash down on the heads of hubristic retail CEOs that extrapolated unsustainable debt financed spending to infinity into their store expansion plans. The added kicker for retailers is the fact Boomers haven't saved enough for their retirements, have experienced a twelve year secular bear market with another five or ten years to go, are in debt up to their eyeballs, and have seen the equity in their homes evaporate into thin air in the last seven years. This is not a recipe for spending up swell.
Demographics cannot be spun by the corporate media or manipulated by BLS government drones. They are factual and unable to be altered. They are also predictable. The four population by age charts below paint a four decade picture of reality that does not bode well for retailers over the coming decade. The population by age data correlates perfectly with the spending spree over the last two decades.
- 26% of the population in the prime spending years between 35 and 54 years old.
- Only 14% of the population over 65 years old indicating reduced spending.
- 24% of the population in the prime spending years between 35 and 54 years old.
- A rising 17% of the population over 65 years old indicating reduced spending.
The irreversible descent in the percentage of our population in the 35 to 54 year old prime spending age bracket will have and is already having a devastating impact on retail sales. In addition, the young people moving into the 25 to 34 year old bracket are now saddled with $1 trillion of student loan debt and worthless degrees from the University of Phoenix and the other for-profit diploma mills, luring millions with their Federal government easy loan programs. The fact that 40% of all 20 to 24 year olds in the country are not employed and 26% of all 25 to 34 year olds in the country are not working may also play a role in holding back spending, as jobs are somewhat helpful in generating money to buy stuff. Even with Obama as President they will have a tough time getting onto the unemployment rolls without ever having a job. The 55 and over crowd, who have lived above their means for three decades, will be lucky if they have the resources to put Alpo on the table in the coming years. The unholy alliance of debt, demographics and delusion will result in a retail debacle of epic proportions, unseen by retail head honchoes and the linear thinkers in the media and government.
We're Not in Kansas Anymore Toto
"We tell ourselves we're in an economic recovery, meaning we expect to return to a prior economic state, namely, a turbo-charged "consumer" economy fueled by easy credit and cheap energy. Fuggeddabowdit. That part of our history is over. We've entered a contraction that will seem permanent until we reach an economic re-set point that comports with what the planet can actually provide for us. That re-set point is lower than we would like to imagine. Our reality-based assignment is the intelligent management of contraction. We don't want this assignment. We'd prefer to think that things are still going in the other direction, the direction of more, more, more. But they're not. Whether we like it or not, they're going in the direction of less, less, less. Granted, this is not an easy thing to contend with, but it is the hand that circumstance has dealt us. Nobody else is to blame for it." – Jim Kunstler
The brilliant retail CEOs who doubled and tripled their store counts in the last twenty years and assumed they were geniuses as sales soared are getting a cold hard dose of reality today. What they don't see is an abrupt end to their dreams of ever expanding profits and the million dollar bonuses they have gotten used to. I'm pretty sure their little financial models are not telling them they will need to close 20% of their stores over the next five years. They will be clubbed over the head like a baby seal by reality as consumers are compelled to stop consuming. As we've seen, just a moderation in spending has resulted in a collapse in store profitability. Retail CEOs have failed to grasp that it wasn't their brilliance that led to the sales growth, but it was the men behind the curtain at the Federal Reserve. The historic spending spree of the last two decades was simply the result of easy to access debt peddled by Wall Street and propagated by the easy money policies of Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke. The chickens came home to roost in 2008, but the Wizard of Debt - Bernanke – has attempted to keep the flying monkeys at bay with his QE1, QE2, Operation Twist, and ZIRP. As the economy goes down for the count again in 2012, he will be revealed as a doddering old fool behind the curtain.
There are 1.1 million retail establishments in the United States, but the top 25 mega-store national chains account for 25% of all the retail sales in the country. The top 100 retailers operate 243,000 stores and account for approximately $1.6 trillion in sales, or 36% of all the retail sales in the country. They are led by the retail behemoth Wal-Mart and they dot the suburban landscape from Maine to Florida and New York to California. These super stores anchor every major mall in America. There are power centers with only these household names jammed in one place (example near my home: Best Buy, Target, Petsmart, Dicks, Barnes & Noble, Staples). These national chains had already wiped out the small town local retailers by the early 2000s as they sourced their goods from China and dramatically underpriced the small guys. The remaining local retailers have been closing up shop in record numbers in the last few years as the ability to obtain financing evaporated and customers disappeared. The national chains have more staying power, but their blind hubris and inability to comprehend the future landscape will be their downfall.
Having worked for one of the top 100 retailers for 14 years, I understand every aspect of how these mega-chains operate. They all approach retailing from a very scientific manner. They have regression models to project sales based upon demographics, drive times, education, average income, and the size of the market. They will build any store that achieves a certain ROI, based on their models. The scientific method works well when you don't make ridiculous growth assumptions and properly take into account what your competitors are doing and how the economy will realistically perform in the future years. This is where it goes wrong as these retail chains get bigger, start believing their press clippings and begin ignoring the warnings of sober realists within their organizations. When the models show that cannibalization of sales from putting stores too close together will result in a decline in profits, the CEO will tweak the model to show greater same store growth and a larger increase in the available market due to higher economic growth. They assume margins will increase based upon nothing. At the same time, they will ignore the fact their competitor is building a store 2 miles away. Eventually, using foolhardy assumptions and ignoring facts leads to declining sales and profitability.
There is no better example of this than Best Buy. They increased their U.S. store count from 500 in 2002 to 1,300 today. That is a 160% increase in store count. For some perspective, national retail sales grew by 42% over this same time frame. Their strategy wiped out thousands of mom and pop stores and drove their chief competitor – Circuit City – into liquidation. But their hubris caught up to them. There sales per store has plummeted from $36 million per store in 2007 to less than $28 million per store today, a 24% decline in just five years. They have cannibalized themselves and have seen a $6 billion increase in revenue lead to $100 million LESS in profits. It appears the 444 stores they have built since 2007 have a net negative ROI. Top management is now in full scramble mode as they refuse to admit their strategic errors. Instead they cut staff and use upselling gimmicks like service plans, technical support and deferred financing to try and regain profitability. They will not admit they have far too many stores until it is too late. They will follow the advice of an earnings per share driven Wall Street crowd and waste their cash buying back stock. We've seen this story before and it ends in tears. I was in a Best Buy last week at 6:00 pm and there were at least 50 employees servicing about 10 customers. Tick Tock.
You would have to be blind to not have noticed the decade long battles between the two biggest drug store chains and the two biggest office supply chains. Walgreens and CVS have been in a death struggle as they have each increased their store counts by 80% to 90% in the last 10 years. Both chains have been able to mask poor existing store growth by opening new stores. They are about to hit the wall. I now have six drug stores within five miles of my house all selling the exact same products. Every Wal-Mart and Target has their own pharmacy. At 2:00 pm on a Sunday afternoon I walked into the Walgreens near my house and there were six employees, a pharmacist and myself in the store. This is a common occurrence in this one year old store. It will not reach its 3rd birthday.
Further along on the downward death spiral are Staples and Office Depot. They both increased their store counts by 50% to 60% in the last decade. Despite adding almost 200 stores since 2007, Staples has managed to reduce their profits. Sales per store have declined by 20% since 2006. Office Depot has succeeded in losing almost $2 billion in the last five years. These fools are actually opening new stores again despite overseeing a 36% decrease in sales per store over the last decade. These stores sell paper clips, paper, pens, and generic crap you can purchase at 100,000 other stores across the land or with a click of you mouse. Their business concept is dying and they don't know it or refuse to acknowledge it.
Even well run retailers such as Kohl's and Bed Bath & Beyond have hit the proverbial wall. Remember that total retail sales have only grown by 42% in the last ten years while Kohl's has increased their store count by 180% and Bed Bath & Beyond has increased their store count by 175%. Despite opening 200 new stores since 2007, Kohl's profits are virtually flat. Sales per store have deflated by 26% over the last decade as over-cannibalization has worked its magic. Bed Bath & Beyond has managed to keep profits growing as they drove Linens & Things into bankruptcy, but they risk falling into the Best Buy trap as they continue to open new stores. Their sales per store are well below the levels of 2002. Again, there is very little differentiation between these retailers as they all sell cheap crap from Asia, sold at thousands of other stores across the country. With home formation stagnant, where will the growth come from? Answer: It won't come at all.
The stories above can be repeated over and over when analyzing the other mega-retailers that dominate our consumer crazed society. Same store sales growth is stagnant. The major chains have over cannibalized themselves. Their growth plans were based upon a foundation of ever increasing consumer debt and ever more delusional Americans spending money they don't have. None of these retailers has factored a contraction in consumer spending into their little models. But that is what is headed their way. They saw the tide go out in 2009 but they've ventured back out into the surf looking for some trinkets, not realizing a tsunami is on the way. The great contraction began in 2008 and has been proceeding in fits and starts for the last four years. The increase in retail sales over the last two years has been driven by inflation, not increased demand. The efforts of the Federal Reserve and Wall Street to reignite our consumer society by pushing subprime debt once more will ultimately fail – again. The mega-retailers will be forced to come to the realization they have far too many stores to meet a diminishing demand.
The top 100 mega-retailers operate 243,000 stores. Will our contracting civilization really need or be able to sustain 14,000 McDonalds, 17,000 Taco Bells & KFCs, 24,000 Subways, 9,000 Wendys, 7,000 7-11s, 8,000 Walgreens, 7,000 CVS', 4,000 Sears & Kmarts, 11,000 Starbucks, 4,000 Wal-Marts, 1,700 Lowes and 1,800 Targets in five years? As our economy contracts and more of our dwindling disposable income is directed towards rising energy and food costs, retailers across the land will shut their doors. Try to picture the impact on this country as these retailers are forced to close 50,000 stores. Where will recent college graduates and broke Baby Boomers work? The most profitable business of the future will be producing Space Available and For Lease signs. Betting on the intelligence of the American consumer has been a losing bet for decades. They will continue to swipe that credit card at the local 7-11 to buy those Funions, jalapeno cheese stuffed pretzels with a side of cheese dipping sauce, cartons of smokes, and 32 ounce Big Gulps of Mountain Dew until the message on the credit card machine comes back DENIED.
There will be crescendo of consequences as these stores are closed down. The rotting hulks of thousands of Sears and Kmarts will slowly decay; blighting the suburban landscape and beckoning criminals and the homeless. Retailers will be forced to lay-off hundreds of thousands of workers. Property taxes paid to local governments will dry up, resulting in worsening budget deficits. Sales taxes paid to state governments will plummet, forcing more government cutbacks and higher taxes. Mall owners and real estate developers will see their rental income dissipate. They will then proceed to default on their loans. Bankers will be stuck with billions in loan losses, at least until they are able to shift them to the American taxpayer – again. No politician, media pundit, Federal Reserve banker, retail CEO, or willfully ignorant mindless consumer wants to admit the truth that the last three decades of debt delusion are coming to a tragic bitter end. The smarmy acolytes of Edward Bernays on Wall Street and in corporate America have successfully used propaganda and misinformation to lure generations of weak minded people into debt servitude. But, at the end of the day, you need cash to service the debt. Mind control doesn't pay the bills. We will eventually return to normal, just not the normal many had in mind.
"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it." – Edward Bernays
Join me at www.TheBurningPlatform.com to discuss truth and the future of our country.
By James Quinn
James Quinn is a senior director of strategic planning for a major university. James has held financial positions with a retailer, homebuilder and university in his 22-year career. Those positions included treasurer, controller, and head of strategic planning. He is married with three boys and is writing these articles because he cares about their future. He earned a BS in accounting from Drexel University and an MBA from Villanova University. He is a certified public accountant and a certified cash manager.
These articles reflect the personal views of James Quinn. They do not necessarily represent the views of his employer, and are not sponsored or endorsed by his employer.
© 2011 Copyright James Quinn - All Rights Reserved
Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.
James Quinn Archive
© 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


text:
- Inside Athletics
- Tickets
- Fan Zone
- Media Zone
- Social
- Shop
- Donate Now
MACON, Ga. (Nov. 19, 2008) - After leading the ETSU volleyball team in blocks and hitting percentage in her first season, freshman McKayla Barber (Columbus, Ind.) was named to the Atlantic Sun Conference All-Freshman team, announced Tuesday by the conference.
"McKayla has done a great job being an important player in our offensive attack," said head coach Lindsey Devine. "She is an athletic person who puts herself in a position to be in impact blocker on our team. In a short span of time she has come to understand her role as a middle blocker, and comes to practice looking to get better."
"To be amongst this group of freshmen recognized by the coaches in the conference is an honor, and McKayla is apart of a very talented freshmen group," Devine added. "It will be exciting to see how she continues to develop in our program. I think next year many of these freshmen will be in the running for first and second team honors in the conference."
The Bucs are set to face fourth-seeded Mercer in the quarterfinals of the Atlantic Sun tournament Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at Mercer's
"I am really proud of this young squad for the determination they have showed to make it back to the conference tournament," Devine said. "In these last two weeks they have demonstrated how much talent there is among these 13 players. I think we match up well with Mercer, because they bring out good things in us. They get a lot of touches and continue plays that most people would consider over, which is something our players can use to energize and challenge them."
ETSU (11-19, 7-13 A-Sun) has won its last two matches - defeating USC Upstate on Tuesday, 3-2, and Campbell on Friday, 3-1. This is the fourth straight season coach Devine as led the Bucs to the A-Sun tournament. ETSU is winless at the tournament suffering heart breaking losses to
Mercer (18-10, 13-7 A-Sun) comes into the match having dropped both matches this past weekend to Belmont and Lipscomb. The Bears defeated the Bucs in both contests this season - mounting a 3-2 comeback in the first match on Oct. 4 in Brooks Gym, and swept ETSU in the second meeting, 3-0.The Bucs are 2-3 all-time against Mercer.
"I feel when we put everything out on the court we will definitely play to the expected level that we have shown in the last two weeks," Devine said. "We are peaking at the right time, and as a young squad we are looking to represent ETSU with great pride on the court."
The game can be seen live on ASun.TV by clicking the link above. The winning team will go on to face top seeded Lipscomb in the semifinals on Friday. Please visit www.ETSUBucs.com for more information on volleyball or any other Buccaneer athletic news.


text:
|Oracle® interMedia User's Guide
10g Release 1 (10.1)
Part Number B10840-01
|View PDF
User's Guide
10g Release 1 (10.1)
Part No. B10840-01
December 2003
Oracle interMedia is a feature that enables Oracle Database to store, manage, and retrieve images, audio, video, or other heterogeneous media data in an integrated fashion with other enterprise information. Oracle interMedia extends Oracle Database reliability, availability, and data management to multimedia content in traditional, Internet, electronic commerce, and media-rich applications.
Oracle interMedia User's Guide, 10g Release 1 (10.1)
Part No. B10840-01
Copyright © 1999, 2003 Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.
Primary Author: Rod Ward
Contributors: Susan Mavris, Simon Oxbury, Robert Abbott, Guozhong Wang, Dongbai Guo, Fengting Chen, Dong Lin, Melliyal Annamalai, Manjari Yalavarthy, Rajiv Chopra, Joseph Mauro, Joseph Meeks, Rabah Mediouni, Bill Voss, Susan Kotsovolos, Rosanne Toohe, Bill Beauregard, Susan Shepard, Deborah Owens
The Programs (which include both the software and documentation) contain proprietary information of Oracle Corporation; they are provided under a license agreement containing restrictions on use and disclosure and are also protected by copyright, patent and other intellectual and industrial property laws. Reverse engineering, disassembly or decompilation of the Programs, except to the extent required to obtain interoperability with other independently created software or as specified by law, is prohibited.
The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice. If you find any problems in the documentation, please report them to us in writing. Oracle Corporation does not warrant that this document is error-free. Except as may be expressly permitted in your license agreement for these Programs, no part of these Programs may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without the express written permission of Oracle Corporation.
If the Programs are delivered to the U.S. Government or anyone licensing or using the programs on behalf of the U.S. Government, the following notice is applicable:
Restricted Rights Notice Programs delivered subject to the DOD FAR Supplement are "commercial computer software" and use, duplication, and disclosure of the Programs, including documentation, shall be subject to the licensing restrictions set forth in the applicable Oracle license agreement. Otherwise, Programs delivered subject to the Federal Acquisition Regulations are "restricted computer software" and use, duplication, and disclosure of the Programs shall be subject to the restrictions in FAR 52.227-19, Commercial Computer Software - Restricted Rights (June, 1987). Oracle Corporation, 500 Oracle Parkway, Redwood City, CA 94065.
The Programs are not intended for use in any nuclear, aviation, mass transit, medical, or other inherently dangerous applications. It shall be the licensee's responsibility to take all appropriate fail-safe, backup, redundancy, and other measures to ensure the safe use of such applications if the Programs are used for such purposes, and Oracle Corporation disclaims liability for any damages caused by such use of the Programs.
Oracle is a registered trademark, and Oracle9i, Oracle Store, PL/SQL, and SQL*Plus are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.


text:
Homeowners asked to re-register for STAR tax rebate
ALBANY - New York will require homeowners to re-register for the STAR property-tax rebate in an effort to crack down on fraud.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and lawmakers have inserted the requirement into the 2013-14 state budget that they intend to enact this week. The initiative comes after the Cuomo administration and others said they've found evidence that some homeowners were receiving improper tax benefits, such as rebates on two homes or getting rebates on second homes when their primary residence is out of state.
Budget documents published Monday also showed the plan will permanently eliminate the fee for a saltwater fishing license, reduce the price of hunting and fishing licenses, expand service at the state Department of Motor Vehicles and ensure that recipients of a new $350 "family tax relief" check receive it by Oct. 15, 2014 -- a few weeks before Cuomo and all 213 state legislators are up for re-election.
Launched under former Gov. George Pataki in 1997, the School Tax Relief Program, or STAR, can exempt a certain portion of a home's value from school taxes. Homeowners with less than $500,000 annual income are typically eligible. STAR exempts the first $30,000 of the full value of a home from school taxes, an administration official said. Annual exemptions total $2.7 billion, Cuomo officials have said.
But in December, the Cuomo administration said it found "significant evidence" of fraud. It said homeowners were double dipping when they could legally receive just one rebate. In other cases, improper beneficiaries included those with second homes in New York but an out-of-state primary residence. That potentially affects some second-home owners in areas like the Hamptons.
Further, a recent state comptroller's sampling of 6,500 parcels statewide found that nearly 20 percent improperly received STAR benefits.
The new law will create a statewide database that will allow the state and local assessors to spot fraud.
"This budget includes rigorous new oversight of the STAR Program that will root out double dippers, break down the silos that have allowed this type of abuse to occur in the first place, and protect taxpayers," Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said.
Under the initiative, the state Tax Department will launch the registration program; homeowners would have until April 1, 2014, to comply. Penalties for filing false statements range from $100 to $2,500. An additional $500 "processing fee" would be imposed on transgressors.
The budget would reduce the cost of a freshwater fishing license from $29 to $22 and permanently eliminate the fee for a saltwater license. The latter was backed by Sen. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) and Assemb. Fred Thiele (I-Sag Harbor), who called it a "major victory for Long Island."
The DMV legislation clears the way for the agency to expand hours, open some offices on Saturdays and allow customers to schedule appointments online. With Joan Gralla


text:
I was once asked to speak about the specialty foods of Easter and Passover. It is significant that both of these holidays frequently coincide, as it does this weekend, and it is no coincidence. The two holidays are about deliverance, rebirth and renewal. And for this reason eggs play a significant role in both holidays. Eggs play a prominent role in many of the recipes we cook for Easter and Passover. Culturally traditional foods are prepared for the holidays. We share these moments with family and extended family because it means so much to us.
Easter is chief among the Christian holidays and is celebrated with a festive meal at the end of Holy Week, which began on Palm Sunday. It is the anniversary of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. At Passover, Jews the world over celebrate one of their most beautiful and cherished traditions, the Passover Seder. The purpose of the Seder is to relate the history of the exodus of enslaved people from Egypt to our children. In so doing, the Haggadah, a special book is read from. This is told at the ceremonial dinner as the participants dine on the symbolic foods of the holiday.
Baskets of Easter eggs with their colorful hues, the fun of preparing them and the hunt happily draw children into the holiday. For Sephardic Jews, Jews of the Iberian Peninsula, huevos haminados, long cooked eggs are significant for the Jewish Sabbath but also play a prominent role during Passover. The eggs are cooked in lots of water to cover at the barest simmer your stove can handle for 6 or 7 hours, topped with a mantle of onion skins This always brings a huge unbelievable WHAT! – 6 to 7 hours? They emerge a kind of tie-dye color with a delicious creamy texture, much like the poached unborn chicken egg from fresh killed poultry.
One of the joys of both holidays is that it signals the beginning of spring. On the festive Easter table one of the most popular dishes is a roast leg of lamb or a ham. At this time of the year there is a welcome abundance of asparagus and artichokes and so these foods are significant for the holiday as well –as they are on the Passover table.
Huevos haminados are eggs that cook very slowly for many hours. They emerge a beautiful reddish brown color with a rich creamy taste. This uniquely Sephardic dish is one of the most ancient dishes of the Mediterranean. It is always included in Sabbath celebrations and appears on other holiday tables such as Passover.
Eggs, enough for each guest for the Passover Seder
Red or brown onion skins, or both
Square of double layer of cheesecloth
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1. Have the eggs at room temperature. Put them in a deep, 5 to 6 quart pot with a tight-fitting lid and fill the pot with water almost to the top. Place the onionskins over the top, cover with a square of cheesecloth and cover the pot. Bring to a low simmer. Lower heat to the barest simmer your range can handle, cover tightly and simmer for 6 to 7 hours, checking the water level occasionally.
2. Discard onionskins; Can rinse and reuse the cheesecloth. Remove the eggs carefully with a slotted spoon when done and serve warm or at room temperature sprinkled with salt and pepper to taste.
Note: Even with the lengthy cooking time, the eggs are tender and as tasty as a poached unborn chicken egg from freshly killed poultry. This was a treat that my mother saved for me. As one of five kids, perhaps this was the epiphany that led me to a career in food.
Everyone loves Italian food. This recipe would do well on both the Easter and Passover table. The addition of red wine vinegar gives this stew, from the area around Spoleto, Italy, a flavorsome tang.
Serves 8 to 10
3 to 4 pounds leg of lamb or lamb shoulder, cut into 1-inch pieces
Flour to dredge lamb pieces
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons canola oil
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
4 to 5 carrots, thinly sliced
8 to 10 new potatoes, scrubbed and cut into large dice
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
2 to 3 cups low-sodium chicken or beef broth
1 to 2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon lemon juice or to taste
1/4 to 1/3 cup chopped flat-leaf Italian parsley
1. For the stew use either lamb shank or shoulder. If using shoulder lamb the cooking would be longer than for the leg of lamb. Trim the lamb of fat and sinew and cut into pieces. Dust the lamb with flour.
2. Heat the combined oils in a large skillet and saute the lamb, a few pieces at a time, until golden brown on both sides. Transfer to a dish as they are done. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
3. Add garlic to the same pan the lamb cooked in and saute briefly, then add the carrots and potatoes tossing to coat the mixture. Add red wine vinegar and bring to the edge of a boil, stirring to deglaze the pan drippings. Return the lamb to the skillet, add enough broth to cover the meat, and the rosemary. Bring to a boil then adjust heat to medium-low. Cover pan and simmer briskly for 30 to 35 minutes until lamb is tender, test for doneness as the shoulder will need longer cooking. Add lemon juice and stir into the sauce. Taste to adjust seasoning if necessary. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve hot.
This recipe is an old favorite and adaptable to almost any special occasion dessert. It can be completely prepared a day before serving.
Serves 8
For the meringue
6 egg whites at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup finely ground almonds
Apricot puree
4 ounces dried apricots, soaked overnight in water to cover
2 1/2-inch wide strips lemon peel
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3/4 cup heavy cream, whipped
Confectioners sugar for garnish
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter 2 9-inch round cake pans and dust with flour. Line bottom of each pan with round disk of parchment paper.
1. In mixing bowl or bowl of electric mixer, beat egg whites at low speed until foamy, add cream of tartar, adjust speed to medium and continue to beat until soft peaks form. Add vinegar, beat just to mix then slowly beat in sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time. Continue beating until very stiff and shiny, about 1 minute. With large rubber spatula fold in vanilla and almonds.
2. Divide meringue mixture into prepared pans. Reduce oven heat to 350 and bake 35-40 minutes until just lightly colored and crisp to the touch. Torn off oven and allow meringues to dry with door ajar about 30 minutes. Remove from oven and cool. Gently invert layers onto a cake rack, and then carefully peel off paper.
3. Meanwhile place apricots and soaking liquid in a saucepan. Simmer gently over low heat with lemon peel, about 30-40 minutes until tender. Cool and transfer to a food processor or blender and puree until completely smooth. Transfer contents to a bowl.
4. Combine water and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Add lemon juice and bring to the edge of a boil. Reduce heat and simmer about 15 minutes or until a think syrup.
5. Whip cream and fold in 1/3 apricot puree, then sandwich between meringue layers. Can be refrigerated covered at this point. Dilute remaining apricot puree with lemon syrup and reserve to spoon over individual portions for serving. When ready to serve transfer to doily lined cake plate and dust with powdered sugar to cover completely.
Adapted from Silvia Lehrer's Cooking at Cooktique, Doubleday.


text:
How Much Would It Cost To Pre-Screen YouTube Videos? About $37 Billion Per Year... - http://bit.ly/JUStY1 spare a fiver, guv?
Is Photographing A Meal 'Taking Intellectual Property Away' From A Chef? -http://bit.ly/KW9Jw6 I have no words
my, the new #bitly is truly of the canine species; I've only just started using it, and I hate it with a hatred already...
24 hours to fire the Minister for Murdoch - http://bit.ly/KHZcYE here's an amusing little #epetition some of you may care to support
RT @Falkvinge Please get the message out to contact MEPs today to reject#ACTA in tomorrow's vote: http://bit.ly/LI9bP6
Murder they wrote – the Dutch kill #ACTA - http://bit.ly/JQ2S9r I'm not convinced...let's keep fighting (v @mgeist)
NC Makes Sea Level Rise Illegal - http://bit.ly/KcBln5 "Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly"; uh-huh (v @BoraZ)
New Zealand Judge Won't Rubberstamp Kim Dotcom Extradition; Orders US To Share Evidence - http://bit.ly/M7zXms sounds fair
Stopping #ACTA: DEVE Committee - http://bit.ly/LItMCO some more MEPs desperate for you to contact them before they vote
Chagas Disease: Poverty, Immigration, And The "New HIV/AIDS" -http://bit.ly/JugOEG already endemic in #texas; blood supplies under threat
The Artistic Case for Abolishing #Copyright - http://bit.ly/JNnAv6 "The simplest answer is that it's unjust to the creator"
#DMCA Notices So Stupid It Hurts - http://bit.ly/LfSQhL just. insane.
#TPP Chiefs Raise Doubts about USTR's Corporate IP Wish List -http://bit.ly/JVyPLJ are the cracks finally appearing?
Intellectual Ventures CEO Nathan Myhrvold: I'm Not Ashamed of Suing People - http://dthin.gs/KWViYF tries to justify the unjustifable
Sean Parker: #Apple Tried To Keep #Spotify Out Of The US -http://tcrn.ch/JAFjoj I'm not surprised, but certainly appalled
Megaupload Asks Court to Dismiss The Criminal Case - http://bit.ly/KJdGaz not with a bang but a whimper?
Can't decide on a typeface? This flowchart will help you choose -http://tnw.co/JNLiHO clever & useful


text:
Search over 1 million properties and 550 airlines worldwide
Free cancellation on most hotels. Because flexibility matters.
Why spend your time in South Downs National Park, England at the mercy of public transportation? You can reserve a rental car that's ideal for you and your travel buddies. Whether you are planning a great road trip or just want to roll the windows down and feel the breeze, Expedia.com.au makes it easier than ever to arrange the perfect ride for your trip in just a few minutes.
Expedia.com.au has the partnerships you need to get the car you want. We have all types of vehicles, including sedans, convertibles, and SUVs, so on your trip to South Downs National Park, you'll have plenty of choices. Better yet, our rent-a-car comparison view makes it easy to quickly find the best prices based on your budget.
When you take advantage of our South Downs National Park car hire deals to reserve a vehicle for your time South Downs National Park, you can get where you're going at whatever time is best for you. Day or night, you can blaze your own trail without having to rely on public transportation to reach your destination. And just think of how much time you'll save without all that walking and waiting around. That's the sort of convenience Expedia.com.au is known for.
If you've signed up for our Expedia Rewards program, you'll have access to our exclusive Unreal Deals. These deals make it easy to add airfares and hotels to your trip by bundling them into one easy package and transaction. And aside from letting you manage your flights and accommodation all in one place, you can also save up to 100% off your ticket or room rate when compared to their individually booked costs.
Needing a computer to reserve your rental car is now a thing of the past thanks to our easy-to-use app that lets you lock down your ideal car, anytime, anywhere. The Expedia app works on Android and iPhone, so that no matter what kind of phone you have, it only takes a few taps to reserve South Downs National Park car rentals.
If you're on the hunt for a cheap car hire in South Downs National Park, England, count on Expedia.com.au to present you with the best deals within seconds. Once you've decided on a set of wheels that speaks to you, reserving your ride is as easy as 1-2-3. Start your search now and take your pick from the best rental cars in South Downs National Park.


text:
Territorial A-ZA | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | 0-9
6 results for Lane Trail:
Displaying results:1-5
See results 6 - 6
View all results
Authors: Kimball, F. D.
Date: May 30, 1856
F. D. Kimball, Attorney General of Ohio, wrote from Columbus, Ohio to Eli Thayer. Kimball reported on James Lane's recent visit to Ohio and described Lane's plans to establish a "line of communication with Kansas via Iowa & Nebraska" for the passage of emigrants and supplies. This line of communication, which allowed free state supporters to bypass Missouri in travelling to Kansas, became known as the Lane Trail.
Keywords: Emigration and immigration; Free state support; Iowa; Kimball, F. D.; Lane Trail; Lane, James Henry, 1814-1866; Nebraska Territory; Ohio; Thayer, Eli, 1819-1899
Letter, A. D. Searl to Mr. [Thaddeus] Hyatt
Authors: Searl, Albert D.
Date: August 21, 1856
The author wrote from Tabor, Iowa to Thaddeus Hyatt, president of the National Kansas Committee. He began the letter by mentioning a skirmish between pro-slavery and free state forces somewhere between Lawrence and Topeka. This correspondence also deals with emigrant settlements within the territory, the shipment of weapons and provisions, and the morale among the emigrants as they struggled to make ends meet. Furthermore, Searl mentioned a great deal about James Lane and his activities within Kansas Territory.
Keywords: Big Blue, Kansas Territory; Blanchard, A. J.; Emigration and immigration; Hyatt, Thaddeus; Iowa City, Iowa; Lane Trail; Lane, James Henry, 1814-1866; Law and Order Party; Lawrence, Kansas Territory; National Kansas Committee; Nebraska City, Nebraska Territory; Plattsmouth, Nebraska; Relief funds; Searl, Albert D.; Skirmishing; Topeka, Kansas
Letter, O. E. Learnard to Dear Friends
Authors: Learnard, Oscar E.
Date: September 9, 1856
From Lawrence, Kansas Territory, Oscar Learnard wrote briefly to some Vermont friends of his recent "military" experience as "Lieutenant Colonel of the 4th regiment (cavalry) of Kansas Volunteers." At the time, Learnard said "the whole Territory presents a scene of wide spread desolation," but he also claimed Kansas was a beautiful place full of opportunity for agriculturalists and real estate investors. At present, however, one should only come if well armed and via "the new road" [Lane Trail].
Keywords: Agriculture; Douglas County, Kansas Territory; Free state regiment; Lane Trail; Lawrence, Kansas Territory; Learnard, Oscar E., 1832-1911; Militia; Real estate investment; Vermont
Letter, Watson Brown to Dear Mother, [Mary Brown] Brother and Sister
Authors: Brown, Watson , 1835-1859
Date: October 30, 1856
En route to K.T. via St. Charles, Iowa, Watson Brown wrote the family that he was in "fine spirits besides being in good company we are in the company of a train of Kansas teams loaded with Sharps rifles and canon.
Keywords: Brown, John, 1800-1859; Brown, Watson, 1835-1859; Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895; Iowa; Lane Trail; Sharps rifles; Smith, Gerritt
Photograph, James H. Lane
Authors: No authors specified.
Date: 1861
This is a copy of an original photograph taken of Lane in New York City, 1861. James Lane was a leader of the free state cause, serving as an aid to emigrants. He was also the first United States senator for Kansas. Mrs. John Ingalls had an original of this photograph, and she loaned it to W. E. Connelley who had six copies made. Connelley presented one copy to the Kansas State Historical Society in 1912.
Keywords: Emigration and immigration; Free state activities; Free state supporters; Lane Trail; Lane, James Henry, 1814-1866; Photographs and Illustrations; United States. Senate
|See results 6 - 6


text:
I've done a bit of searching for specific Safari version numbers in support.apple.com. Quite a few versions have specific change notes, but it seems like often the versions bundled with major OS X releases aren't given their own change notes.
1.0: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2964
1.2: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL612 (Dave Hyatt also provided some more detailed notes on the old WebKit blog: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2004_02.html#004874)
Also, sometimes Apple's release notes can be a bit... terse.
I'm trying to figure out which versions of Safari introduced support for HTML5/CSS features.
Wikipedia's got a great table of releases, but it is a bit vague on CSS improvements (e.g. "improved CSS support").


text:
SUNY Canton Commits $25,000 Scholarship For Claxton-Hepburn EmployeesThursday, June 27th, 2013
In support of Claxton-Hepburn's next capital campaign, the SUNY Canton College Foundation has generously committed $25,000 in scholarship support to assist Claxton-Hepburn employees seeking a SUNY Canton Nursing or Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree. This scholarship was established to encourage CHMC employees to continue their education and pursue higher levels of training in order to provide the highest level of care to the community.
Each fall for five years, five Claxton-Hepburn employees will be selected through an application process for a $1,000 scholarship to help them with tuition and other applicable educational expenses while pursuing a two- or four-year nursing degree. David Ferris, Chief Nursing Officer at Claxton-Hepburn, who received his Nursing degree at SUNY Canton in 1984 and teaches in the program today, commented "We are fortunate to have SUNY Canton's nursing programs in our community. This scholarship program is a wonderful opportunity for our staff and we are excited to work with SUNY Canton."
Since 1902 when the A. Barton Hepburn Nursing School was founded, and later through work with SUNY Canton, Claxton-Hepburn has been committed throughout its history to high-quality local nursing education. Claxton-Hepburn provides clinical experiences for SUNY Canton nursing students, and later employs many of them. The medical center also has a tuition reimbursement program for employees who return to seek higher degrees while employed. Claxton-Hepburn's long connection with the SUNY Canton Nursing program also includes the service of Linda Fay, Professor Emeriti of Nursing at SUNY Canton (1972-2005), who is on the Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center and the Claxton-Hepburn Health System boards.
Originally issued by Claxton Hepburn Medical Center.
About SUNY Canton:
SUNY Canton offers a variety of career-driven bachelor's degrees in addition to its associate and certificate programs. In the past year, the College added two new bachelor's degrees and expanded its facilities with a new athletic center, nicknamed Roos House, and the Grasse River Suites Residence Hall. The College's faculty members are noted for their professional real-world experience in addition to their academic credentials. SUNY Canton OnLine offers flexible and convenient online courses and programs. The College's 14 athletic teams compete as provisional members of the NCAA Division III as well as the USCAA.


text:
It is that time of the decade where one stares at their music collection and promptly regrets buying 95% of the music they now own. Everyone does it. Okay, maybe I do it. I buy a lot of music, so much so my children are convinced that I actually buy milk at the local vinyl store and bread from iTunes. This small habit has created a massive music collection that can be somewhat unwieldy. It doesn't stop me from gathering up hundreds of albums from the past decade and asking myself a very simple question:
If I could only save fifty of these albums from the past ten years, what fifty would it be?
It would be easy for me to write-up a list in which only Green Day, and White Stripes albums are on it, simply because they produced amazing albums this decade. I could have simply gone with my kids suggestion and made the list all about Hannah Montana and the Wiggles. That was tempting, they could have written it for me.
My criteria was simple. First- I must have actually listened to it. I still have a couple of albums in the plastic. Most of these albums were gifts from well-meaning people who thought that I really needed Daniel Bedingfield's album.
Second- How often did I listen to this album? Having the most listens didn't mean that it would be number one. Music is very much my day between the hours of six a.m. and six p.m. There are albums on this list I only listened to once and found so compelling that I felt it needed to be on the list. Most I have listened to so often my CD player refuses to open to play them again and my iTunes has decided that they are the only artists I listen to.
Lastly- I must have had fun listening to it at some point. Dreary music is of no interest to me. That doesn't mean sad music is ignored for the oeuvre of Britney Spears. On the contrary, I find Britney Spears to be enormously depressing. But her greatest hits album makes for a delightful coaster.
The list, in full, after the break.


text:
Hey folks,
Just playing around with Freesco atm - was trying to get a from-scratch build set up of the base system but can't find the sources for most of the userland bits and pieces. There's a few patches in the 0.4.5 .zip file but the license file references other customized packages that don't seem to have sources in that .zip (though entirely possibly I'm looking in the wrong places). I'm also not entirely sure of the correct versions of source packages to use etc as well.
Just wondering if there was a full source package (or list) floating around for the userland components at all?


text:
Every time you step into a warehouse, you imagine it as a gymkhana obstacle course for a tiny go kart. This is that fantasy brought to life.
It's intended to be a tribute to Kenneth Blockenheimer's Gymkhana, but it achieves something greater than that. It satisfies my idle dreams of warehouse micro-hoonage.
That and it makes me want one of those Razor Crazy Carts.
(Hat tip to Turbowagon!)


text:
Activision Unveils Exclusive Guitar Hero(R): Warriors of Rock Partnership with Rock Legends Rush
All-New Story-Based Quest Mode Pays Homage to the Cult Classic RUSH Album, 2112
Jul 21, 2010, 08:00 ET
SANTA MONICA, Calif., July 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Rush, one of the most influential rock bands in history, have joined together with Activision Publishing, Inc.'s (Nasdaq: ATVI) Guitar Hero®: Warriors of Rock to bring their seven-part suite from their classic 2112 album to the game's all-new, story-based Quest Mode this September. For the first time ever, Guitar Hero® fans will embark on an epic voyage playing as eight Guitar Hero characters that transform into rock warriors who must join together to use their unique, game-changing powers to help the Demi-God of Rock take down "The Beast" to save rock.
"The music, the story and the journey of 2112 lends itself perfectly to the quest in Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock," said Geddy Lee of Rush. "In our story, the caves of 2112 are where our hero finds the lost guitar and this rediscovery of music is much like the Guitar Hero warriors' journey to find the Demi-God of Rock's Legendary guitar, which has been trapped in a cavern."
"I love the idea of Guitar Hero; they have combined two great things – music and fun," said Alex Lifeson of Rush. "I think it's a great way to introduce people of all ages to music of various styles by all kinds of different bands, while providing a launching pad for kids who want to get into playing music."
Within the narrative-driven journey, Rush and Guitar Hero fans alike will experience 2112 in a totally new and authentic way while traversing the exclusive three-part 2112 Rush-inspired venue and playing their way through the 20 minute, seven-part suite. Additionally, each song transition will feature band members narrating liner notes from the 2112 album. Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock will include:
- "2112 Pt. 1 – Overture"
- "2112 Pt. 2 – The Temples Of Syrinx"
- "2112 Pt. 3 – Discovery"
- "2112 Pt. 4 – Presentation"
- "2112 Pt. 5 – Oracle: The Dream"
- "2112 Pt. 6 – Soliloquy"
- "2112 Pt. 7 – Grand Finale"
"Our collaborations with legendary artists and bands, like Rush, are key to creating an original rock experience and have helped drive Guitar Hero's success," said David Haddad, Chief Operating Officer, Guitar Hero. "The journey that Rush's 2112 seven-part suite takes fans on fits flawlessly within the story Neversoft has expertly created for Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock and perfectly adds to the authenticity of the game."
In Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, join with friends on an epic rock journey to save rock n' roll. Featuring the most music ever in a Guitar Hero game with an impressive 90+ track set list and a host of all-new gameplay features, living room legends and their friends can strum, drum and wail in the most immersive music videogame experience to date. Delivering the quintessential rock music collection that focuses on guitar shredding hits from bands such as Black Sabbath, Slipknot and Megadeth and larger-than-life band anthems from Queen, Muse and KISS, players can unleash more rewards and unlockable content than ever before in Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock's Quest Mode, the franchise's first ever story-based mode, and Quickplay+, which invites challenge-starved fanatics to test their rock skills. Running on the powerful Guitar Hero engine that has been expanded and refined and with encores from the critically-acclaimed and fan favorite gameplay features that made Guitar Hero one of the most popular franchises of all-time – such as Party Play, Competitive modes and any combination of up to four instruments – the game offers a complete interactive and connected experience bringing friends and foes to the stage in the ultimate rock music experience.
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock is being developed by Neversoft Entertainment for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and by Vicarious Visions for the Wii™ system from Nintendo. The game is rated "T" (Teen – Lyrics, Mild Fantasy Violence and Mild Suggestive Themes) by the ESRB. For more information about Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, please visit GuitarHero.com.
About Activision Publishing, Inc.
Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision Publishing, Inc. is a leading worldwide developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment and leisure products.
Activision maintains operations in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, South Korea, China and the region of Taiwan. More information about Activision and its products can be found on the company's website, www.activision.com.
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this press release that involves Activision Publishing's expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Activision Publishing generally uses words such as "outlook," "will," "could," "would," "might," "remains," "to be," "plans," "believes," "may," "expects," "intends," "anticipates," "estimate," future," "plan," "positioned," "potential," "project," "remain," "scheduled," "set to," "subject to," "upcoming" and similar expressions to identify forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause Activision Publishing's actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements set forth in this release include, but are not limited to, sales levels of Activision Publishing's titles, shifts in consumer spending trends, the impact of the current macroeconomic environment, the seasonal and cyclical nature of the interactive game market, Activision Publishing's ability to predict consumer preferences among competing hardware platforms, declines in software pricing, product returns and price protection, product delays, retail acceptance of Activision Publishing's products, adoption rate and availability of new hardware (including peripherals) and related software, industry competition including from used games and other forms of entertainment, litigation risks and associated costs, rapid changes in technology, industry standards, business models including online and used games, and consumer preferences, including interest in specific genres such as music, first-person action and massively multiplayer online games, protection of proprietary rights, maintenance of relationships with key personnel, customers, licensees, licensors, vendors, and third-party developers, including the ability to attract, retain and develop key personnel and developers that can create high quality "hit" titles, counterparty risks relating to customers, licensees, licensors and manufacturers, domestic and international economic, financial and political conditions and policies, foreign exchange rates and tax rates, and the identification of suitable future acquisition opportunities and potential challenges associated with geographic expansion, and the other factors identified in the risk factors sections of Activision Blizzard's most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to Activision Publishing and Activision Blizzard as of the date of this release, and neither Activision Publishing nor Activision Blizzard assumes any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements believed to be true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of the future performance of Activision Publishing or Activision Blizzard and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond its control and may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.
Guitar Hero and Activision are registered trademarks of Activision Publishing, Inc. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
"PlayStation" is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. Wii is a trademark of Nintendo. All rights reserved.
SOURCE Activision Publishing, Inc.


text:
Roundup: Fish Taco Chains in Southern California
Would you like fries (or onion rings or chicken tenders) with that?
Anyone who hasn't spent time in SoCal usually responds to the concept of "fish tacos" with a baffled, maybe disgusted face. "Fish...in a tortilla?" They might be picturing fish sticks, and at their worst (cough, Del Taco) that's what fish tacos can be.
But at their best, the grab-and-go meal (a staple for surfers) involves a double layer of still-steamy corn tortillas, big hunks of grilled or fried fish, cabbage shreds, and pico de gallo (where the tomatoes are cilantro-flecked and bright red, not a mealy pink). The fish is usually a white, flaky fish like mahi-mahi, cod, or whatever else swishes around the waters of Mexico's Baja region, where the taco breed has roots.
Some say Ralph Rubio of the Rubio's chain was the fish taco godfather for Southern California. As the story goes, after tasting some from a side-of-the-road Baja vendor he returned to San Diego and in 1983, birthed his fast-casual taco empire.
Call me crazy, but when I return home to Southern California, it's not really In-N-Out that I crave—it's the fish tacos. You can find a good burger in many pockets of the world but fresh, un-nasty fish tacos? Not so much. Here's a roundup of the SoCal staple from some local chains. **
** Maybe scouting out the more hole-in-the-wally taquerias and taco trucks would have made for a better roundup, but hey, fish tacos are supposed to be fast and no frills. So I went to fast-food chains.
All products linked here have been independently selected by our editors. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy.


text:
More on open source servers
GroupServer is an open-source (GPL) mailing-list manager that doubles as a forum/bulletin board. Email posts are mirrored on the web, and vice versa -- in other words, it's more than an archive.
It's a neat idea, and you can check out the user interface via OnlineGroups.Net, which provides free public GroupServer groups. Setting up and using a group was easy, and the server software is fast. It also does clever things like hiding included text at the end of an email (you can click to unhide). One security criticism: My password was shown in plaintext when I first set it.
You can also download and run the software yourself. According to the web site, it runs on CentOS and Ubuntu; unfortunately, I encountered problems with Zope versions and apparently blocked web sites when installing on Ubuntu.
The documentation isn't particularly helpful on the matter of problems, and there's not a big community around this software (unlike, say, Mailman), so it's hard to find support online. However, the company replied when I tweeted about my travails, so they do seem to be happy to be helpful.
If you want to run something that's both a mailing list and web forum (thus avoiding having to choose!), GroupServer looks promising. I'm not convinced it's really ready for an independent install, but the OnlineGroups.Net site itself is clearly running well. It's worth checking out as a stand-alone install, especially if you're interested in playing around with Python and Zope and have a little time to spare.
In a final, unrelated note: After just over two years at ServerWatch, I'm moving on. I hope you've enjoyed the columns, and I'm looking forward to reading future Tip of the Trade columns by my successor.
Juliet Kemp has been messing around with Linux systems, for financial reward and otherwise, for about a decade. She is also the author of "Linux System Administration Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach" (Apress, 2009).


text:
[Little girls, of about six or seven, were asked what do they like to do. And then sometime later the same question asked in a slightly different form; they were asked what do little girls like to do. ]
I've got 54321,
I've got a red pair of high-heels on,
Tumble me over, it doesn't take much,
Tumble me over, tumble me, push.
In my red high-heels I've no control,
The rituals of repression are so old,
You can do what you like, there'll be no reprisal,
I'm yours, yes I'm yours, it's my means of survival.
I've got 54321,
Come on my love, I know you're strong,
Push me hard, make me stagger,
The pain in my back just doesn't matter.
You force-hold me above the ground,
I can't get away, my feet are bound,
So I'm bound to say,
That I'm bound to stay.
Well today I look so good,
Just like I know I should,
My breasts to tempt inside my bra,
My face is painted like a movie star,
I've studied my flaws in your reflection
And put them to rights with savage correction,
I've turned my statuesque perfection
And shone it over in your direction.
So come on darling, make me yours,
Trip me over, show me the floor,
Tease me, tease me, make me stay,
In my red high-heels I can't get away.
I'm trussed and bound like an oven ready bird
But I bleed without dying and won't say a word.
Slice my flesh and I'll ride the scar,
Put me into gear like your lady car,
Drive me fast and crash me crazy,
I'll rise from the wreckage as fresh as a daisy.
These wouds leave furrows as they heal,
I've travelled them, they're red and real,
I know them well, they're part of me,
My birth, my s**, my history,
They grew with me, my closest friend,
My pain's my own, my pain's my end.
Clip my wings so you know where I am.
I can't get lost while you're my man.
Tame me so I know your call,
I've stabbed my heels so I am tall,
I've bound my twisted falling fall,
Beautiful mute against the wall,
Beautifully mutilated as I fall.
Use me don't lose me.
I've got 54321,
I've got a red pair of high-heels on.
Strap my ankles, break my heels,
Make me kneel, make me feel.
Turn, turn, turn, like a clockwork doll,
Put in your key and give me a whirl.
Tease me, tease me, the reason to play,
In my red high-heels I can't get away.
I'll be your bonsai, your beautiful bonsai,
Your black-eye bonsai, erotically rotting.
Will my tiny feet fit your desire?
Warped and tied I walk on fire.
Burn me out, twist my wrists,
I promise not to shout, beat me with your fists.
Squeeze me, squeeze me, make me feel,
In my red high-heels I'm an easy kill.
Tease me, tease me, make me see,
You're the only one, I need to be me.
Thankyou, will you take me?
Thankyou, will you make me?
Thankyou, will you break me?
Use me don't lose me,
Taste me, don't waste me.
Use, lose, taste, waste.


text:
The High-definition nylon fabric guarantees weightlessness and fluffiness. It is thin yet resistant and thanks to its features, it guarantees impermeability plus wind protection. It also absorbs humidity and dries rapidly.
Wash & Care Instructions:
Machine wash in cold water. Hang to dry. Do not dry clean
Composition: 100% Nylon


text:
It all started with the Jelly Bean Incident.
My daughter was 3 years old, and she loved jelly beans. A baby fistful of the brightly colored morsels was just about the biggest prize she could imagine, and at 1 tiny gram of sugar per bean, it seemed to me—her caring, reasonably attentive mother—to be a pretty harmless treat. So it was with the best of intentions that we decided one day to bring some jelly beans to share for her playdate at Noah's house.
Noah's mom, Laura, stocked their pantry with normal kid stuff—Popsicles and juice boxes and Teddy Grahams—so I didn't think much about offering the jelly beans. But Laura seemed taken aback: "Well, he's never really had that before … I suppose it couldn't hurt."
Couldn't hurt? Could she really believe I was harming my child, and threatening to harm hers, by holding out a few tiny pieces of candy? But greater condemnation was to follow. Her husband, Gary, had been listening to the exchange, and with a dark glare in my direction, he hissed at Laura, "Oh, so I guess you'll start giving him crack now, too?"
He might as well have shouted in my face, "Bad mother!" I was stunned—it was just a few jelly beans, after all.
I had already promised my daughter she could have some candy—and to be honest, I like jelly beans, too—so we snuck out to the patio to enjoy our illicit treat. As we ate, though, I couldn't help but think, What if I'm wrong? Candy is certainly not a "healthy" snack. But there I was, letting my 3-year-old eat the jelly beans, encouraging her, even. My own mother wouldn't have let me have them, that's for sure—my childhood home was a no-candy zone. Maybe I was a bad mother.
This moment was when I first started paying attention to candy and especially to the ways people talk about eating or not eating it. Just about everyone agrees that candy is a "junk food" devoid of real nutrition, a source of "empty calories" that ruin your appetite for better things like apples and chicken. But empty calories alone couldn't account for a reaction like Gary's, which made it seem like it was just a skip and a hop from the innocence of Pixy Stix to the dangerous and criminal world of street junkies.
And it isn't just Gary who sees candy as some kind of juvenile vice. Once I started paying attention, I noticed that a lot of stories out there suggested disturbing connections between candy and controlled substances. In 2009, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that middle-school kids were freaking out their parents by inhaling and snorting the dust from Smarties candies; YouTube "how to" videos were all the rage for a few months. Even more worrisome were exposés in 2010 on Detroit television stations about proto-alcoholic teens sneaking "drunken gummy bears" into homerooms and movie theaters. And it can't be an accident that "rock" can be either candy or crack; "candy" was used as a euphemism for cocaine as early as 1931. In the spring of 2012, actor Bryan Cranston offered talk-show host David Letterman a taste of "blue meth," the superpotent methamphetamine that drove the action in the AMC hit drama Breaking Bad. It wasn't real methamphetamine, of course, just a sugar prop, but candy maker Debbie Hall, who created the TV version, quickly started selling the ice-blue rocks in little drug baggies to fans at her Albuquerque, N.M., shop the Candy Lady.
Hall's creation is just a novelty gag, but there are some people who think that the sugar it's made from is as harmful as the meth it's imitating. Addiction researchers warn that the tasty pleasures of candy, cakes, potato chips, and the rest of the sweet, fatty indulgences we fondly know as "junk food" light up the same brain receptors as heroin and cocaine. A team at Yale showed pictures of ice cream to women with symptoms of "food addiction" and found that their brains resembled the brains of heroin addicts looking at drug paraphernalia. The idea of food addiction has become part of the national anti-obesity conversation; even Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. secretary of health and human services, announced in May 2012 that for some people, obesity is the result of "an addiction like smoking."
The belief that craving a sugar fix is the same thing as jonesing for a hit of something stronger depends in large part on one's definition of addiction. Representatives of the food industry tend to favor a more narrow designation. A study funded by the World Sugar Research Organization concluded in 2010 that although humans definitely like to eat sugar, the way we eat it doesn't strictly qualify as addiction. On the other hand, Dr. Nora D. Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse warns that "processed sugar in certain individuals can produce … compulsive patterns of intake." Compulsion isn't quite addiction, but there are even more alarming reports of research at Princeton and the University of Florida, where "sugar-binging rats show signs of opiatelike withdrawal when their sugar is taken away—including chattering teeth, tremoring forepaws and the shakes." Rats plied with a fatty processed diet of Ho Hos, cheesecake, bacon, and sausage at the Scripps Research Institute didn't do too well either; the rats quickly started overeating and wouldn't stop gorging themselves even when the scientists began zapping them with electrical shocks. The study's authors concluded that "junk food elicits addictive behavior in rats similar to the behaviors of rats addicted to heroin."
Call it addiction or craving or compulsion, it does seem certain that having a little candy causes many people to want to eat more. What makes junk food so irresistible, according to former Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler, is its "hyperpalatability." In his book The End of Overeating, Kessler shows how the food industry manipulates its products to make us want to keep eating them. The addition of large quantities of fat, sugar, and salt is what makes processed foods taste good. But these additives do more than just make bland ingredients taste better. Sweetness, saltiness, and fattiness, alone or in combination, may actually stimulate our appetites, and the more we eat, the more we crave. Thus, this food isn't just palatable, it's hyperpalatable. The arts of the food chemist and the food technologist bring us this experience in ever more perfect and irresistible forms. Witness the food engineering marvel that is the Snickers bar as Kessler describes it: "[A]s we chew, the sugar dissolves, the fat melts, and the caramel picks up the peanut pieces so the entire candy is carried out of the mouth at the same time." It's a sensory symphony of fat, sugar, and salt: perfectly delicious and completely impossible to recreate at home.
Hyperpalatability (i.e., extreme yumminess) plus aggressive marketing by corporate parent Mars, Inc. explains Snickers' permanent perch at the top of the best-selling candy-bar lists. The caramel, nougat, and peanut confection has been an American favorite since its introduction in 1930; now it dominates the international markets too, with annual global sales projected to exceed $3.5 billion. And Snickers is but one star in a globalized candy universe; in 2012, total worldwide retail candy sales were estimated at $118 billion. Hershey vies with Mars for the top spot in the United States, while global conglomerates Ferrero, Mars, Kraft, and Nestlé rule the traditional candy markets of Europe and North America. New markets in far-flung locales previously innocent of American-style snack foods are getting bigger every day. Russian sales of Snickers have doubled in the past five years, and in 2011 the emerging middle classes in Russia, Brazil, India, and China accounted for more than half the growth in retail candy sales. In more and more places, people are eating candy in the American style: as a snack, on the go, any day, or every day.
And candy in the United States is still going strong. It is true, as Steve Almond so morosely recounted in Candyfreak, that its prominence in American life today is much diminished from its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. But though the parlor candy dish may have passed out of fashion, plenty of candy is still finding its way into American mouths. Despite the loss of variety (in American manufacture, at least) and the disappearance of many old-time favorites, the quantity of candy sold on a per capita basis in the United States is higher today than it has ever been. Retail sales amount to some $32 billion per year and are growing, in good times and in bad, even through the most recent recession. Susan Whiteside, vice president of communications for the National Confectioners Association, suggests a simple reason for candy's success: "When economic times are tough, the things that bring you a lot of happiness that don't cost a lot of money tend to stay in your budget."
Candy is one of those simple pleasures that make people feel good, and it's a pleasure that's never hard to find. Candy is conveniently located right next to the cash register in just about every retail establishment, from suburban megastores to urban bodegas and every store in between, and sold from vending machines in schools, libraries, athletic parks, and wherever else people gather. It's so plentiful and so ubiquitous that most of the time we don't even notice it. As to how we define candy, I suspect that most of us operate on a pornography principle—we know it when we see it—but the definition of candy is never quite so simple as one might think. People who think about these things every day, like indefatigable candy reviewer Cybele May, who posts at candyblog.net, sort candy from not-candy with a few specific qualities in mind: a sweet substance with a base of sugar, not liable to spoilage, ready to eat without preparation or utensils, and consumed primarily for pleasure. This is pretty good, so far as common-sense definitions go, but it is getting a lot more difficult to say with confidence what sorts of foods ought to be included in the broad category of candy.
Usually, if we think about candy at all, it's as the stuff of happy memories: cotton candy at the state fair, the birthday party piñata, the overflowing Easter baskets and Halloween bags, the glittering Hanukkah gelt, the comfort of the lollipop at the doctor's office, the reward of M&M's for potty training, the chocolates from a loved one on Valentine's Day, or the prettily wrapped favors at weddings. But even when candy is freely given to children and intended to heighten the pleasure of special events, it's almost always accompanied by a warning: Don't let all that candy spoil your dinner, and remember to brush your teeth right afterward.
It seems paradoxical that the candy that gives us some of our happiest experiences is the same candy that rots our teeth, ruins our appetite, and sucks tender innocents into a desperate life of sugar addiction. Candy joins the ideas of pleasure and poison, innocence and vice, in a way that's unique and a bit puzzling. The older name for a candy maker is confectioner, which comes from Latin roots that mean, roughly, "making together" or "putting together." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a confectioner is "one who makes confections, sweetmeats, candies, cakes, light pastry." But there is another meaning for confectioner: a "compounder of medicines, poisons." It is a troubling thought: sweetmeats and poison originating from the same source.
Excerpted from Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure by Samira Kawash, published in October 2013 by Faber and Faber, Inc., an affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright 2013 by Samira Kawash. All rights reserved.